December 23, 2023
"He really is willing to stop at the current positions. He’s not willing to retreat one meter."
Said a "former senior Russian official... relaying a message he said the Kremlin was quietly sending."
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54 comments:
Peace deal now.
Stop the killing.
And make the Russians bury their war dead they have left on the battlefield.
There could have been a peace deal months ago but Joe wanted to keep the bribe money flowing.
Good guys might win! Good guys might win!
Never in a life span did I ever imagine typing those words. Ugh.
This makes sense to me. In "the other" Georgia, Putin had some nominal control of the whole country, then retreated to the most "Russian" areas: ethnic Russian, Russian speaking, etc. I'm pretty sure this is not Hitler at Munich.
Putin wants to keep Crimea. He may regard the gift of Crimea to Ukraine as a bad practical joke.
He's been sending that message for a while now. Trump hears it. DC neocons have their fingers in their ears, going, "La-la-la."
Well, yeah. Thinking that the Russians were going to voluntarily retreat back to the 2014 borders that Obama allowed them to cross was always a non-starter. The Ukrainians are not going to accomplish that with their own manpower.
The Russians, with or without Putin, are going to keep pushing to get a security zone roughly the equivalent of the old Warsaw Pact space (which stretches back to what the Czars wanted to control) for as long as they have the demographics to make the attempt. The question will be if NATO is a credible enough threat to keep them in line, post-Ukraine.
Sure he’ll agree to a ceasefire—Russia needs time to rebuild its military to take the rest of Ukraine. In the meantime, Russia has so much of Ukraine’s coastline that it will have a hard time staying viable as a country. It will be just that much weaker when Russia decides to take its next bite.
"He really is willing to stop at the current positions."
but, of course, the USA won't let THAT happen.
We will INSIST that the Ukraine fight (and die) until their ENTIRE country is gone.
How old are the new ukrainian recruits now? 50 years old? Don't WORRY! once we've used up all their 50 year olds, there will be PLENTY of 60 and 70 year olds to fight and die. The USA will NOT declare defeat, until we've lost it ALL! It's just our way.
I'd like to hear from our war mongering posters.. Dr We Evil? any thing to add?
When Vivek becomes President, the full extent of Joe’s bribe stash must be uncovered. Bitcoin is key. He’s got hundreds of millions in Bitcoin. Bitcoin was invented for criminals. Charlie Munger told the whole world.
The Obama/Biden/Clinton's ethnic Spring will remain a viable choice until Trump, once, perhaps again, will abort its progress.
"He really is willing to stop at the current positions."
Russia has... had (pre-coup) legal title in Crimea. Since the assault by successive regimes in Kiev, Russia has stood with Ukrainians in the South and East to mitigate their progress.
We will INSIST that the Ukraine fight (and die) until their ENTIRE country is gone.
Nonsense. The Ukrainians are not fighting and dying because the US makes them do it. If they were that placid and pliable they would not be putting up the type of fight they have been doing.
Most Ukrainians, including a majority of those in the Russian speaking areas, don't want to live under Russian rule. Can't blame them.
Lol. I see the US is trying to declare victory and so trying to make it out that it's Putin's idea. Gosh, our media is worthless. They actually believe people believe their propaganda.
thats not at all clear, now we do know that happened to every Ukrainian leader sans Mazeppa and Khelmenitsky, it didn't end well Kuchma the Yeltsin analogue really didnt bring any great improvement,
Amexpat said...
“We will INSIST that the Ukraine fight (and die) until their ENTIRE country is gone.”
Nonsense. The Ukrainians are not fighting and dying because the US makes them do it.
Remarkable, isn’t it, how some people have convinced themselves that the whole world is as obsessed with US domestic politics as they are.
Just like the Korean War we both declare victory. Yeah that’s the ticket. (70 years of virtual peace and still working.)
If we are laying bets, you can put my money on this really meaning that the US is open to negotiations as long as we can declare victory. I don’t see any reason for Russia to negotiate since we have simply ignored any provisions of the previous agreements that we didn’t like, for instance giving the Donbas similar autonomy and language rights that Quebec enjoys. This was promised. Merkel and other Western leaders have admitted that these empty promises were nothing more than an attempt to buy time to build up the Ukrainian army for the war Joe Biden precipitated with his letter in November of 2021 changing US policy and breaking promises made to Russia not to extend NATO membership to the Ukraine.
We will see if we are being lied to again, or if this time the “50 intelligence officers” are telling us the truth. I am not holding my breath.
Good. End it now. End our subsidies.
Sometimes, some borders should be changed, and this can be done peacefully. Some borders between Russia and Ukraine might be changed.
The United Nations could conduct referendums of the populations in those border regions. If those regions vote by super-majorities -- say, 3/4 or 2/3 -- to change the borders, then the UN should change those borders.
Obviously, Birches, no matter how many times the same lie is used, which is to frame a confession as an accusation against the other side, the comments here show that plenty of otherwise intelligent people will believe it.
When Putin took a question from the New York Times, it was a feeler about that reporter who traveled to the Russian interior to try to gauge armament production. The regime seems to be setting up some kind of exchange so that Biden can have a fig leaf as Ukraine realizes how badly we have used them and that, like Obama said, this is an unwinnable war. I am sure our plan will be to declare that Putin wanted all of Ukraine, despite his public words that he doesn’t, and doesn’t consider it possible, so that when Ukraine is left as an impoverished rump state, and needy ward of the EU, we can declare that we stopped Putin from reoccupying the Warsaw Pact, which, BTW, was given to the Soviets by FDR and Churchill, and which Russia could never achieve anyway.
Biden pushed the Ukraine chips onto the table and Biden is responsible for the end result.
Tim in Vermont at 9:23 AM
breaking promises made to Russia not to extend NATO membership to the Ukraine.
There was no such promise not to extend NATO membership. Rather, this was a possibility that was mentioned briefly in some talks.
This issue has been examined at length in a book titled Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by historian M.E. Sarotte. I have not read the book, but I have watched a one-hour talk that Sarotte gave on BookTV. You might be able to find a video of her talk.
I sympathize with some Russian arguments that the Russia-Ukraine border should be changed. However, it is not a historical fact that Russia ever got a real promise from NATO to not change that border.
They don't even bother to keep their lies straight anymore: we were told Putin was trying to conquer the world - just as we're told Hamas wants to do the same AND kill every Jew..
"The People" don't run this country: we wait to see the results of deceit.
Sarotte's book Not One Inch was discussed by her on a C-SPAN broadcast.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?519120-1/not-inch
“… so long as it could declare victory.”
Make’m an offer they have to refuse. Denying Biden a chance to improve his sagging polls is a poison pill. Really sneaky that Trump puppet Putin.
Russia has more territory than when the war started.
That makes them the winner...
The ambiguity of the NATO position served us well but Biden blew that to hell. However how would the USA really react to Mexico joining a Chinese military alliance? We went apeshit over a few missiles in Cuba. For a long time we aggressively opposed any Soviet military operations in South America. Admitting the Ukraine to NATO is extremely dangerous and unnecessarily provocative. Do what I say not what I do is dangerous as a parent but it is stupidly close to suicidal as statecraft.
Joe Smith,
"That makes them the winner"
I tried calling that guy Phyrrus to get his comments on this, but turns out he's not available.
Amexpat said...
"Most Ukrainians, including a majority of those in the Russian speaking areas, don't want to live under Russian rule."
Speaking of what "most Ukrainians" really want, more than half of them, or about 20,000,000 left Ukraine altogether. Few millions moved to Russia, so they are probably OK "to live under Russian rule". More than 10 million moved to the West, so they are probably Not OK to live under present Kievan regime.
Spam filter alert
the Russian polity in general, made it clear they were not keen on NATO expansion, Phillip Shorts remarkably fair bio of Putin, illustrates that, other sources like to pretend, the popular histories of Robert Massie show the territorial project was more than a one off,
Putin "Was open to a ceasefire" two years ago! His position has never changed. (1) Ukraine must not be part of NATO and (2) the Breakaway Republics are part of Russia.
That's it. Could have had that deal 2 years ago, and 200,000 men would be alive today.
Putin "Was open to a ceasefire" two years ago! His position has never changed. (1) Ukraine must not be part of NATO and (2) the Breakaway Republics are part of Russia.
That's it. Could have had that deal 2 years ago, and 200,000 men would be alive today.
I guess all the warhawks have suddenly decided that putin isn't going to CONQUER THE WORLD!!! so now we can have peace.
But don't worry the next time Putin something, they'll be just as hysterical and will trot it out again. That's their M.o. country X is going to CONQUER THE WORLD or IS DESTROYING DEMOCRACY and we have to spend lives and billions or trillions of dollars to stop them.
Then after its over, they forget all about Country X. And afer a year or two, they have a new super villian to scream about. THis time Country Y or Country Z.
Endless war for Endless Peace.
Vlad knew that you Trumpers would eventually come around to his side
dr wevil is doing the last minute shopping and is unable to produce his usual fart, or as he likes to put it - "comment."
Yep, Lem is right. The cabal is trying to improve Biden's numbers. Obviously, that was the entire reason for the pot pardons. He's doing terrible with the young. I didn't like Obama as president but I thought he was at least competent. This third term is showing he's not. This feels like the Obama Biden team <a href="https://youtu.be/Pk8grGedzAw?si=_TUbRcZK_u-8CjaB> right now</a>.
"There was no such promise not to extend NATO membership. Rather, this was a possibility that was mentioned briefly in some talks."
Yes, we had our fingers crossed when we said it, but American representatives in senior positions did say it. The fact that we have come up with all kinds of lawyerly arguments to make a case that we never did doesn't change the deep distrust that going back on our word created.
At the end of Putin's 4 hour press conference, can you imagine Joe Biden doing that? he was asked what he would say to a younger version of himself, and his answer was "Don't be so naive, and don't expect the West to negotiate in good faith." So any propaganda printed in the New York Times that Putin is desperate for some face saving deal is just that. He does not believe that he has a partner to negotiate with.
Howard said...
"Vlad knew that you Trumpers would eventually come around to his side"
Vlad also knows that Howards and their ilk can't resist making divisive comments like this, sowing dissension and setting Americans against each other, thus ensuring inevitable demise of the US.
BTW, Ukraine is not heavily recruiting men under 27 despite that the average age of their soldiers is mid-forties. Do you know why? Because they are on the brink of demographic collapse. Apparently Lindsay Graham was wrong, and they are not actually willing to fight to the "last Ukrainian."
This promise to Ukraine to join NATO that Joe Biden extended has been a catastrophic miscalculation, and in five years, the idea of a neutral Ukraine between NATO and Russia is going to look awfully good, but Joe Biden and his neocon cabal in the State Department threw that outcome away. European security is going to be a heavy financially burden on the US for decades to come. Europe is already going into recession over the loss of cheap Russian energy and is shutting down factories across the whole EU because of it. Ukraine is planning to shut off even more cheap Russian gas to Europe next year. The LNG we send is far more expensive.
I still think it's about global warming, and gaining veto power over extraction of Russian hydrocarbons. It's the only motivation I can imagine for the reckless risks the US has taken. Either that, or Joe Biden is just a clueless old fossil who thinks it is still the '80s when the US was a fearsome manufacturing power.
Hillary knew that Howard would eat up her lies about Trump and Russia and that Howard would still hate Putin because "he beat Hillary" but remember, every election the Democrats win is clean as a whistle, and every election the Republicans win is dirty and crooked. MSNBC assures us of this.
It would have been beneficial if someone in the West actually evaluated the military strengths and weakness of Ukraine v Russia when this began. Had they done that they would have come to the conclusion that the best thing for all would have been some kind of peace deal when the Ukraine had the Russian military on its heels. Instead we have supported the killing of untold thousands on both sides to - if the Ukrainians are lucky - end up in approximately the same place; except for the fact that the Russians now have a solid defensive perimeter in SE Ukraine from which to launch any offensive they desire.
As usual the DC establishment has everything backwards: they should be encouraging the Israelis to wipe out Hamas and dictate the terms of any settlement; and they should be doing everything possible to halt the bloodshed in Ukraine before we get dragged into it.
It's true that one of the stupidest things that Joe Biden has done is to embark on a totally divisive presidency, domestically, while provoking a war abroad that would absolutely require unity at home. I know he stole an election from Trump, but he had a lot of help, but once he became the decision maker... well, I don't believe that he could win a game of checkers with a chicken, as I have said before.
'I tried calling that guy Phyrrus to get his comments on this, but turns out he's not available.'
If the point was to take that territory, then it's a win.
Besides, I don't think the soldiers that Putin started with were his best and brightest.
Kind of like if we sent our liberals out first as cannon fodder.
Smart and good for the country...
'Vlad knew that you Trumpers would eventually come around to his side'
Go fight for Ukraine.
They'll take you but you won't go.
Tim in Vermont at 1:17 PM
The fact that we have come up with all kinds of lawyerly arguments to make a case that we never did doesn't change the deep distrust that going back on our word created. The fact that we have come up with all kinds of lawyerly arguments to make a case that we never did doesn't change the deep distrust that going back on our word created.
I advise you to watch that C-SPAN interview of Professor Sarotte.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?519120-1/not-inch
Neither the USA nor NATO "went back on our word" in relation to this issue.
In conversations with Russia, there was a mention of a possibility that NATO might be a deal to limit NATO expansion as part of an agreement about Ukraine. That possibility was merely mentioned, but was not negotiated significantly. There was no such agreement at all.
The C-SPAN video -- one hour long -- focuses on that one issue and explains it quite well.
Made you look 🤣
There is zero chance that our proxies in Western Ukraine are going to agree with this. Putin knows this, so it gives him an excuse to keep pushing for a complete (and inevitable) collapse. The real question is what is Ukraine going to look like (really look like) when this is over.
It's amazing how many people here confidently report 'facts' that are very easily shown to be false. We're left wondering whether they're simple liars, fantasists who just imagine their 'facts', or gullible people passing on propaganda from liars. Two examples:
1. Lloyd B. Robertson (6:58am) assures us that "Putin had some nominal control of the whole country [Georgia], then retreated to the most 'Russian' areas: ethnic Russian, Russian speaking, etc.".
There's a whole Wikipedia article on "Russians in Georgia" and they're less than 0.5% of the population. There's a map showing the places with the highest percentage of Russians (>5%) and they're all cities a long way from the border. I can't find information on the occupied areas, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but I doubt they have any significant population of Russian civilians. (Lots of Russian soldiers, of course, because they invaded and killed a lot Georgians doing so.) All the areas of Georgi bordering the two occupied regions are <1% Russian. Of course, another 200,000+ Russian draft-dodgers fled to Georgia after the second invasion of Ukraine last year, but he can't have invaded Georgia to protect Russians who (a) weren't there yet, and (b) he would rather have stayed home so he could draft them.
2. Candide (11:22am) writes "Speaking of what 'most Ukrainians' really want, more than half of them, or about 20,000,000 left Ukraine altogether. Few millions moved to Russia, so they are probably OK 'to live under Russian rule'. More than 10 million moved to the West, so they are probably Not OK to live under present Kievan regime."
When I DuckDuckGo "How many Ukrainians have left Ukraine", most of the first ten hits give 6,000,000 or 6,200,000, and only one goes as high as 8,000,000. Who says it's 20,000,000? Also, most of those who have gone to Russia have been forced to do so by the Russians, who are trying to solve their own "Great Replacement" problem (white Russians having too few kids, Mongols and Chechens and such having too many) by forcing Ukrainians to turn Russian. And those who have moved to the West have no objection to "the present Kievan regime" (meaning the democratically elected legitimate government of Ukraine). Some are draft-dodging men, but the vast majority are women and children fleeing from Putin's nightly terror-bombing of civilian neighborhoods, hospitals, and power plants.
So, Lloyd B. Robinson and Candide, who told you these 'facts'? Whoever it was lied to you, and you have a moral obligation to avoid those sources in the future, and to tell us who they are so we can avoid them, too. Otherwise we'll have to conclude that you made them up yourselves.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for 'tim in vermont' to answer the same question about the slanderous falsehoods he wrote about Latvia in the Moscow Naked Party comments.
By the way, I have read that most Ukrainians wanted to join the EU, and very few wanted to join NATO until - when do you think? - 2014, when Putin invaded. In other words, saying that NATO expansion caused Putin's aggression is literally preposterous, putting the cart before the horse, reversing cause and effect. Putin's multiple invasions are what made his vulnerable neighbors want to join NATO.
Dang it. I missed quotation marks.
This feels like the Obama Biden team right now.
I don't know anything about Ukraine that was not told to me by the media, except that I have house cleaners that came here as refugees from the war, they think that Russia is demonic.
My opinion is that Hillary, a known war monger "we came, we saw, he died" infected the state dept with war lust and her acolytes thought it would be great to have Ukraine fight Russia to destroy Russian power. The background noise has been that "Russia is exhausted as a military power, even though Ukraine has suffered." Beiden and McConnel would not want China to be exhausted of military power due to personal finance. Putin was a special target because Hillary made up of whole cloth the Trump Putin connection.
Perhaps Beiden signaled that the door to Ukraine was open in order to sucker Putin into attacking Ukraine, only to drop the hammer on him?
This is the kind of Law/Diplo fare that the Democrats are known for.
I know when I want to send a quiet message to someone, I always use the New York Times.
I, for one, have no trouble spending US money to kill Russian soldiers. I'd like a higher rate of return per dollar than up to now, but proxy wars with Russia have been a thing since 1948, when Truman sent US advisers to help the Greeks stop the Albanian communists from invading. I'd say let the Russians bleed more, and get better control than sticky-fingered Joe has shown on the $$$ sent. And if the front moves towards Crimea, all the better.
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